Kupe's Journey: Building a Low-cost, Screen-free Robotic Programming Environment for Children

Tangible-based programming environments for children are becoming more common, and purchasing various commercial systems is now possible. However, most of these environments are locked down and use pre-existing components. While these systems are typically designed for ease of use, it is hard to customise them for specific locations and needs. This paper explains our prototype of a low-cost programming environment that uses robots to navigate a map. Educators and other users can produce new components using paper and integrate them with the robot. We evaluated the usability of the system with a small group of children. The children could easily use the robots to navigate all locations on the map. In addition, we could quickly generate new maps and commands and integrate them with minimal work. This project allows for future work developing low-cost materials on top of the existing platform.